Prague, June 16 (CTK) – Artists took part in experiments with LSD under the Communist regime, with surrealist painters being asked to act as volunteers as they could capture the feelings the drug gave to them, the documentary film LSD made in CSSR showed on Thursday.
The film was presented at a seminar staged by the seminar of Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (USTR)
In Czechoslovakia, LSD was manufactured as a substance that could be used for the treatment of mental diseases in the 1960s.
It caused a considerable change in perception. Psychiatrists watched its effect on volunteers.
Supervision was indispensable, Milos Vojtechovsky, one of the psychiatrists who conducted the LSD research, said in the film.
“It was a sort of psychosis. Without control, one can commit something reckless, including a suicide,” Vojtechovsky said.
The Communist military also saw a potential in the substance.
A short film was preserved in which the use of LSD all but destroys a well-working military team.
In the 1960s, experiments with LSD were also made on children who had past very traumatic experiences.
In 1971, the manufacturing and research of LSD were banned worldwide.
However, Communist Czechoslovakia continued with the research.
It was eventually found out that the substance does not treat psychiatric defects and it could even destroy the mind.
The military, too, lost interest in LSD. In 1974, the research was banned even in Czechoslovakia and all LSD supplies had to be burned down.
However, one kilogramme of LSD is still buried in the garden of the prominent psychiatric clinic in Bohnice in Prague, the film said.
